It’s been over a year since we last looked in on our favorite teenage werewolf, Jack Russell, so we have a bit of catching up to do before we get into our discussion of today’s main topic. Following issue #3‘s conclusion of the extended plotline concerning the Darkhold — the mystical bound volume that had acted as a MacGuffin for most of the series’ early run — subsequent installments had seen Jack involved in a succession of one or two-part adventures that usually involved his younger sister Lissa (who learned Jack’s lycanthropic secret in issue #4) and/or his best friend Jack Cowan (who had to wait until issue #12 to get clued in regarding that vital info). On the creative end, the feature’s original writer-artist team of Gerry Conway and Mike Ploog, who’d been on board ever since the Werewolf’s three-issue tryout in Marvel Spotlight, came to an end with #4; while Ploog remained the book’s penciller for three more issues, Conway was succeeded by Len Wein, who served as writer through #8. That last issue was drawn by Werner Roth as his one and only effort on the title; the next saw the arrival of a new artist — Tom Sutton — who was joined by an “old” writer — Gerry Conway. (As a side note, the same month that Werewolf by Night #8 came out saw the Werewolf meet Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up #12 — a Conway-Wein collaboration that firmly established Jack Russell’s adventures as taking place in the main Marvel Comics continuity.)
With Werewolf by Night #9, the returning Conway introduced a new major continuing plot element — the sort of thing which had been largely lacking in the series ever since the wrap-up of the Darkhold storyline — in the form of the Committee. This was a shady group of businessmen and Wall Street types committed to stimulating the American economy (and to making themselves obscene amounts of money thereby) through any means necessary. As chronicled by Conway and Sutton in issues #9 and #10, such means included employing a costumed operative calling himself Sarnak, Master of Sound, to create a mind-controlled “army of fear” using a sonic whistle. The Committee was also interested in Jack and Lissa Russell, whom their investigators had rightly determined to be lycanthropes (although Lissa’s still being shy of her 18th 
birthday meant that her curse had yet to manifest itself), as well as in their wealthy stepfather, Phillip (whom Jack had suspected of being responsible for their mother’s death ever since Marvel Spotlight #2). Even as Jack struggled to free himself and Lissa from the clutches of Sarnak (who was keen to add a couple of werewolves to his aforementioned fear army), Phillip was abducted from his home in broad daylight and transported to the Committee’s secret lair.
While Sarnak was dispatched by the end of WbN #1o, Phillip Russell remained a prisoner. But, never fear, his fate would be picked up on in the opening scene the following issue — though not by Gerry Conway. In yet another near-total overhaul of the title’s creative line-up, issue #11 found Conway yielding the writer’s spot to Marv Wolfman — a move that, naturally, was commemorated in #11’s credits…
Meanwhile, Tom Sutton had stepped down as penciller (though he hung around long enough to ink this one issue) to be replaced by Gil Kane.
Yikes. Sucks to be Phillip Russell at the moment, don’t you think? Alas for poor Phillip, we won’t see him again this issue, as Wolfman and Kane spend most of “Comes the Hangman” attending to other, non-Committee-related matters, including Jack’s transition from crashing at Buck Cowan’s place to moving into a swingin’ singles apartment building, as well as the debut of a homicidal costumed vigilante named the, um, Hangman. This unpleasant fellow has a penchant for kidnapping the young women he “rescues” and chaining them up in a dungeon, but though he’s as adept with a scythe as with a noose in taking down street criminals, by the conclusion of the following issue, #12, he’s discovered that his methods are considerably less efficacious against a feral, slavering wolf-man.
Issue #12 also finds Wolfman and Kane (joined by new inker Don Perlin) advancing the Committee subplot, as they check in first with the unfortunate Phillip Russell…
…and then, a few scenes later, as our hero learns of Phillip’s disappearance from Lissa…
The Committee’s thugs manage to knock Jack unconscious — but then make the mistake of waiting until dark to move him from the apartment…
From this scene, the Werewolf lopes on into his final tussle with the Hangman, who seemingly (but not really) perishes in the encounter (though we should note that he ultimately succumbs to being crushed by rubble, rather than to the teeth or claws of the Werewolf). That clears the stage for a new menace (or two) to show up the next month, in Werewolf by Night #13… and for yet another change in artist, as well, as Gil Kane departs, and Mike Ploog follows the example set earlier by Gerry Conway in returning to the feature he helped birth a couple of years previously.
For those of you keeping score at home, Ploog had spent his six months away from the Werewolf busy with other assignments for Marvel; these included the last issues of his run on Frankenstein, the first issue of his run on Kull the Destroyer, and two stories for the publisher’s black-and-white magazine line, which appeared in Crazy #1 and Dracula Lives #4, respectively. He certainly hadn’t lost a step during that period; indeed, the work he’d contribute over the next four issues would arguably be the best looking “Werewolf by Nigh” art ever to appear under his name — despite the fact that he was only able to do full art chores for the covers, his interior pencils bring embellished by Frank Chiaraamonte. As I’ve stated on previous occasions, Ploog was a very difficult artist to ink well — but if you couldn’t have Ploog on Ploog, Chiaramonte on Ploog was almost always the next best thing.
Following an excellent, if somewhat misleading cover (the “terrifying man-monster” pictured on it isn’t called Taboo, at least not within the story [though it might just possibly be his surname, as we’ll see a little further on]), Werewolf by Night #13 opens with an even more memorable splash page:
Though the fact was completely lost on my sixteen-year-old self in October, 1973, the illustration shown above is an obvious homage being paid by Ploog to his mentor and former boss Will Eisner, evoking as it does any number of splash pages in Eisner’s classic newspaper feature The Spirit that featured such femme fatales as P’Gell, Sand Saref, and Nylon Rose… though it doesn’t directly emulate any of them, so far as I’ve been able to determine.
The Darkhold? Yep, it’s back. (Sort of.)
As the Werewolf slips into an unnatural unconsciousness, the story slips into a flashback, which begins several hours earlier. We’ll skip the first couple of pages, involving interactions between Jack and his fellow residents at the Colden House apartment building, and pick things up at the part where Jack is driving out to the place he’s found to hole up the three nights of each month that he gets all furry ‘n’ fangy. Or did you think he was planning to let his alter ego slaughter all those swingin’ singles so that he could have the whole place to himself?
Naturally, we readers are as surprised to see Phillip Russell here as is the Werewolf, since he was still a captive of the Committee the last time we saw him.
For the record, we readers never saw the Darkhold “destroyed” in WbN #3; rather, everyone (including writer Gerry Conway) seemed to forget all about it right after Aelfric summoned the demonic Dragonus to duel our protagonist, and subsequently perished for his pains. I suppose we’ll have to assume that Jack returned to the scene of the battle after the fact, didn’t see the Darkhold anywhere, and decided it had been destroyed somehow, as opposed to simply being snatched up by a person or persons unknown. And I further suppose that Jack was probably correct, as this particular copy of the eldritch tome doesn’t ever seem to have resurfaced in the Darkhold’s complicated continuity. Anyway, it’s kind of cool that the Darkhold continues to serve as a MacGuffin in these stories, even when (like the genuine Maltese Falcon) the real thing doesn’t ever actually even appear (save for a flashback that’ll be coming up soon).
As for the revelation that Taboo has cast spells “making the Committee work for me“: while the implication here is that everything that we’ve seen that money-hungry cabal do in regards to the Russell family in recent issues has been at the whim of this previously-unseen sorcerer, later developments will call that interpretation somewhat into question. That said, Taboo is clearly directly responsible for poor Phillip Russell’s relocation from one very grim setting to another.
Exasperated by Topaz‘s intransigence, Taboo yanks her up and pulls her out of the cell– though before he locks the heavy wooden door behind them, he removes the mystic barrier separating stepfather from stepson. Uh oh.
One might fault Marv Wolfman for identifying Punjab as a “city” rather than a region, but otherwise the historical references in this section seem to be pretty much accurate; although the script is somewhat vague on this point,Taboo would appear to have been on the Muslim side of the conflict over the 1947 partition of India, since his California digs are (rather inappropriately, it seems to me) referred to elsewhere in the story as a “mosque”.
Detail of a panel from Witches #2 (Aug., 2004) featuring Topaz. Text by Brian Walsh; art by Mike Deodato.
The light-skinned, blonde-haired Topaz certainly stands out among her fellow Punjabis; we’re probably meant to assume her to be an orphaned descendant of the white British colonizers who had ruled the Indian subcontinent for well over a century prior to 1947. (Interestingly, beginning with the first issue of Marvel’s 2004 miniseries Witches, Topaz has been presenting as ethnically South Asian; to the best of my knowledge, no in-story explanation has as yet been offered as to which appearance [if either] is supposed to be her natural one.)
Once again, Topaz tries to tell Taboo that her compassion isn’t for the Werewolf, but for “the gentleness — the goodness” of the human soul within the beast. To which Taboo retorts, “Goodness –? What of the goodness of Algon –? What of his sleeping soul?”
This is a rather different account of how Jack and Lissa’s father came by “the sacred parchments of the Darkhold” than was indicated (at least visually) by Werewolf by Night #3, which appeared to show him acquiring them from an old woman. Of course, another, later story (published in Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme #15 [Mar., 1990]) will state that the Baron bought the “Book of Sins” from Taboo, rather than took it by force… so I guess you’ll have to let your own headcanon be your guide as to what actually went down way back then.
Topaz’s magic has the Werewolf writhing in agony — and Taboo gloating with glee. But then, a voice from offstage calls, “Hold it right there, mister –”
Believe it or not, we’ve finally arrived at the ostensible subject of today’s post, Werewolf by Night #14. Produced by the same creative team of Wolfman, Ploog, and Chiaramonte, “Lo, the Monster Strikes!” opens with a few pages that recap previous events while the Werewolf and the Phillip Russell-possessed shell of Algon take a few tentative swipes at each other. But just when it seems the battle is really about to get going…
A somewhat nonplussed Jack picks up his stepdad’s inert form, and, with Topaz in tow, returns to the Russell family home in Los Angeles; a trip described in a caption as “uneventful”, which I figure means they must have taken a cab (as the trio would surely have drawn more than a bit of unwanted attention on public transportation, and making the journey on foot would have been highly impractical, to say the least)…
“Daimon” is a Greek word referring to a lesser divinity or spirit; it’s also the source of our more familiar modern word “demon”. Wolfman’s use of the word as a proper name here doesn’t seem to have any real significance; in any event, I’m pretty sure that this particular skull isn’t meant to be taken for that of Daimon Hellstrom, as the Son of Satan was still possessed of his cranium over in Marvel Spotlight around this time.
For the record, Gerry Conway had given Jack Russell a girlfriend named Terri back in Marvel Spotlight #2; she’d appeared all of once after that, in Werewolf by Night #2, and hadn’t been seen since. So I think it’s safe to assume that the couple broke up between issues, somewhere between then and now; here’s hoping it was amicable.
Anyway — hopping into the red convertible (identified on the next page as an MG) — and here I guess we’ll have to assume that this car belongs to Lissa, or even Phillip, since Jack left his own wheels somewhere in the vicinity of “the southern tip of the Verdugo Mountains” back in #13 — Jack hits the Golden State Freeway to head back to Taboo’s abode Before long, however, he realizes he’s being tailed by a blue sedan — one which he rightly pegs as being occupied by goons working for the Committee. Seeing as how Taboo’s dialogue a couple of pages back indicated that he wants Jack to return, whatever influence the corpulent conjuror had previously been exercising over that sinister group appears to no longer be in play…
Whoof. After clambering back up to the clifftop, and then taking about a half-hour for his heart rate to slow down just a smidge, Jack hoofs it the rest of the way to “the jeweled mosque of Taboo…”
I’m not sure that I quite follow why it’s easier for Taboo to enslave Topaz’s “soul and essence” when her physical body’s not present — and it’s not like the guy really needed to worry about Jack interfering with his spell-casting, since we know he’s able to create invisible mystical barriers and the like. So why didn’t he just keep them both around until nightfall? But I guess we’ll have to roll with these developments, since otherwise the last few scenes would be kind of pointless, wouldn’t they?
Regardless of whatever problems this sequence may have in regards to the logic of Wolfman’s plotting, Ploog and Chiarmonte’s artwork for these pages is absolutely terrific.
So… Taboo wanted Jack to return just so that he could have Algon turn him “into a golden werewolf statue“? Umm… sure. Why not?
Taboo looks pretty danged dead, here — but, hey, you know how it is with sorcerers. He’ll be back by issue #28, just 14 months from now.
I feel fairly certain that Gerry Conway had no idea that Phillip Russell would turn out to be not just Jack and Lissa’s stepfather, but their uncle — or, for that matter, that their actual father would turn out to be named Gregory Russoff. (As far as I know, up until this very scene the late Gregory has never been referred to as anything other than “my/our/your father” or “the Baron” over the course of the series.)
Which isn’t to say that Wolfman doesn’t make it all work, of course…
My only real quibble with Wolfman’s work here is that the Committee’s blackmailing of the Russells seems like fairly small potatoes for this cabal of seemingly well-heeled business-and-finance types, at least in terms of helping them reach their larger goals. But it’s a small point; overall, I think that Wolfman’s resolution of the series’ long-running subplot involving Jack’s dilemma over what he should do about his supposedly uxoricidal stepfather manages to be both unexpected and narratively satisfying.
Transylvania? Sure, why not? To the best of my knowledge, the “old country” whence come the Russells has never been named before this moment, having only been referred to as being vaguely somewhere in the Balkans. So Transylvania fills the bill quite nicely… especially since it sets up Marvel’s inevitable Tomb of Dracula/Werewolf by Night crossover, our coverage of which begins one short week from now with a look at ToD #18. I hope you’ll join me then.
I suppose it’s possible Taboo simply nudged the Committee in a direction they wanted to go, and exaggerated his role to impress Jack.
This feels very jerky — Taboo averts the Clash of Titans abruptly, the Russell family drama is wrapped up with a reveal that I’d have found cumbersome on a TV soap (I’ve watched a few). Art is great.
Not for the first time it strikes me what a remarkably nice werewolf Jack becomes. Unlike most of his cinematic counterparts he never wants to kill (IIRC), just to run free and howl, only then stupid people get in the way and Wolf Must Slash! So to speak. I guess Marvel decided that was more marketable than making him a monstrous monster.
That brings up a problem with nearly every serial “horror” series — with one notable exception, most tone down the horror and rarely if ever have the star monster do anything truly horrible. The exception is Dracula, who is loosely based on historical person who was a notoriously brutal despot who murdered thousands of people in a truly terrible manner. So Drac was a ruthless murderer long before he became a vampire and he’s not feeling the least bit tortured about his condition but revels in it and joyfully brings on the horror. I think that worked very well because even though no one could really cheer for the main character, there was the thrill of actual horror and the ongoing conflict between Dracula and the vampire hunters trying to bring him down.
Other horror stars sort of follow the pattern of the Hulk — seems pretty horrific in the beginning but eventually becomes a quasi-heroic figure, only with some potential to go out of control and commit bloody mayhem on innocent people but most times only brings harm to people “who deserved it” for one reason or another. I haven’t read the entire WBN series, but from the little I have read and as based on Alan’s excerpts, Jack the Werewolf fits the pattern as it doesn’t appear he’s actually killed any innocent people, although given a terrific scare to quite a few (and same with John (Man-Wolf) Jameson. Of course, it would be very problematic for an ongoing series if Jack did wind up killing people every single night he transformed into a Werewolf. Existing within the Marvel Universe, it’d be ridiculous to think the entire superhero community would just ignore the murders or that there wouldn’t be a massive effort to track him down and capture or kill him. And unless Jack became a total psychopath, he’d be obliged to turn himself in to the authorities rather than put his freedom over the lives of innocent people.
As to Frankenstein’s Monster, having intelligence he doesn’t go on mindless rampages and despite his freakish appearance, it’s possible to imagine him trying to live some sort of “normal” life, although that wouldn’t make for a very exciting comic. Set in the modern era, it would be asinine to have him focus on “revenging” himself on the heirs to Frankenstein who had nothing to do with him, and otherwise he just seems to roam around, routinely bumping into trouble.
Morbius is troubled about his condition but does place his freedom over innocent lives. Only have one issue of his series, so don’t really know how well that played out, but the consensus doesn’t seem it was particularly good.
Swamp Thing was interesting, a variation on Frankenstein, but with Swampy on the run from people who thought he had murdered his human self and wife, and who keeps running into or being shanghaied into bizarre circumstances. Problematically, Matthew Cable comes off an obnoxious idiot, an incompetent investigator who fails to adequately study the evidence enough to realize that Swamp Thing could not possibly have committed the crime he was accused of and didn’t even exist until afterwards. Still, great art during the original run, but Alan Moore really brought the character to another level, first jettisoning the notion that Swamp Thing could ever be transformed back into Alec Holland by revealing that he had never been Alec Holland at all but was a plant that happened to have Holland’s memories. And then coming up with many intriguing ways to have horror visited upon Swamp Thing and Abby.
Man-Thing was also interesting as a mostly mindless creature who didn’t have the capacity to whine about his condition. It was a masterstroke for Gerber to make his swampy environs the “Nexus of All Realities” and, hence, a region where bizarre things regularly happened. Also, Gerber did stories on the horrors committed by more or less ordinary people, albeit twisted by their all-too-common extreme viewpoints and extreme emotions which appeared to subliminally compel Man-Thing, as a sort of empath, to get involved to get to the source of the emotions and do something to eliminate them. Of course, conveniently, Man-Thing usually only caused direct harm to evil people.
Enjoyed reading this overview up to the present issue of WBN. Topaz was a fascinating character. 50 years ago, I was entirely unfamiliar with Eisner’s Spirit, but am much more educated about that aspect of comics history now, and, yep, Topaz looks very much like one of the femme fatales the Spirit routinely got tangled up with. Interesting touch that she refuses to use her powers to kill, even at risk to her own life. Of course, very convenient for the title character! Of course, the evil Taboo at least appears to be killed by his own folly. And the business with the “mosque” was exquisitely silly. If anything, Taboo should have been described as following his own take on Hinduism or Buddhism but not any sort of devout Muslim. But then, in the real world, people can twist religious beliefs in all manner of directions divergent from mainstream traditions, and even pick and mix multiple traditions. Not that I think Wolfman put much serious thought into what Taboo’s religious beliefs were.
Good point about monster/villain protagonists. I was discussing elsewhere online that a number of British comics about villains go this route: The Spider, for instance, was always attacking other supervillains who threatened his plans to become king of crime.
Morbius had some great weird plotlines (Steve Gerber, Don McGregor) and a couple of wonderful moments like meeting Blade (“What the? The mother’s in daylight and facing a cross and he’s not going down!” “You poor deluded man, do you seriously imagine the vampire of superstition is real?”). Not enough, as I found out reading the two Epic volumes (https://atomicjunkshop.com/hes-undead-jim-but-not-as-we-know-it-morbius-the-living-vampire/).
Morally the Living Vampire is all over the map depending on the writer: he kills without a thought, he drains only what he has to, the kill is as necessary as the blood. He does have a string of stories in Vampire Tales where he becomes the anti-hero battling an evil cult.
Hulk started out as a monster when Marvel did monster books; his second series makes him much more a conventional superhero (https://atomicjunkshop.com/is-he-superhero-or-monster-or-is-he-both/) But it never quite worked with him because we’re shown repeatedly that he causes horrible collateral damage wherever he goes.
A few people, Marv Wolfman & Steve Skeates in DC’s Spawn of Frankenstein; Dean Koontz in a series of novels he wrote; Dick Briefer in a comic series for Archie in the 1940s; and Grant Morrison when he used the Spawn of Frankenstein in his 7 Soldiers stories in 2008 or 2009, had the Creature become a kind of “superhero for the Underclass,” since he can’t really mingle in average society because of how he looks.
He lives as best he can, reads a lot and helps out the downtrodden He might be a natural ally for the Giffen version of Ragman. he is somewhat like the Joker-Ace, Troll, in the Wild Cards novels.
I suppose if he could avoid the pitchform and torch brigade, the Frankenstein Monster (in any version did he adopt any formal name for himself?) might be capable of living for quite some time, assuming all his vital organs kept functioning by whatever means and his other revitalized body parts were somehow immunized from further decay. In science fantasy, pretty much anything is possible, even if the science portion of it is positively bonkers! In Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks gives the new creature a happy ending and that was as credible as any other ending for his story.
Didn’t he name himself “Adam” in Shelley’s novel?
The DC “Spawn of Frankenstein” was revived after being frozen (which he survived because his blood is different from human norms and didn;t freeeze an d expand.
As for Mel Brooks, expect a VMI alum to take an origenal approach . . . .
As I think i mentioned in another comments thread, the Creature shows up — calling himself Victor Frankenstein II — living in the icy north in one story of arc of Young All-Stars. Roy Thomas was clearly setting him up for a return but the book didn’t last that long.
The Creature also shows as a supporting character in Mike Carey’s Vertigo series “Unwritten.”
If I remember correctly, the version of the monster on Dark Shadows was also called Adam.
Yes, a writer could pretty make up whatever rules they wanted: the monster doesn’t decay, he’s replacing his decaying parts with pieces of other people, he and the Bride successfully reproduced.
I wouldn’t have recognized the Eisner tribute as a teen either, even if I’d read this back then. But it’s screamingly obvious now.
Indians with blue or green eyes and more light brown/dsrk blonde hsir are not uncommon, just as it is not uncommon among Arabs. (It is particularly common is Lebanon,, both due to the fact that these are naturally occuring traits and French [and other Farang in Outremer] genetic influence. .
Good point. A friend in IT works with an Indian who has the bluest eyes she’s ever seen.
Wolfman’s cultural and religious references are all over the place in these stories. Alan, you picked up on his misapprehension that Punjab is a city, not a state or region, and his somewhat awkward description of Taboo’s house as a “mosque”, with the inference that he comes from the Muslim side of the divide.
Odd, then, that said mosque contains a huge statue of the Buddha, given that Islam is even stricter than Judeo-Christianity about the whole graven image thing. I suppose you could say that Taboo is an apostate with bells on, though.
Also amusing that the young Topaz addresses Taboo as “Memsahib” – this is basically the same as calling him “Ma’am”!
It’s still a terrific read, though, and the Ploog/Chiaramonte art is every bit as good as you say.
There is “White Magic” within the Abrahamic religions (see. e.g., some aspects of Kabbalah; Albertus Magnus’s The Long Lost Friend). There are also things that can be used for good that carry risk, such as the use of curses against malefactors in Judaism and the binding of angels, as Ned Kelly and Dr. Dee are rumpred to have done,, in the Christian (even Protestant) tradition.
Taboo appears to be, not only, apostate, but down right hetrodox, using not only black magic but symbols of power from other faiths). In Iraq and parts of Syria, the Yazidis who are often villified as devil worshipers. but who seem to practice an Abrahamic faith strongly influenced by Zoroastrian beliefs, where Angels are worshiped as G-d’s agents and emanations
Top
Colin Stuart beat me to the misuse of “Memsahib” here. Perhaps it’s in the tradition of the original Human Torch’s fiery sidekick partner being “Toro,” which sounds like “torch,” but actually means “bull” in Spanish. (C’est “taureau” en Francais.)
The name “Algon” made me chuckle a little, for there’s another Algon in comics: he was an Element Man before Rex Mason, and we hear of him in the penultimate issue of *Metamorpho* (#16) and meet him in the final book (#17). Neil Gaiman mentions his name readily in *The Sandman* No. 20, though he takes care not to call Rex “Metamorpho.” (Would spoil the “Facade” if he did, I suppose, bwah-ha-ha!)
I don’t have the means to offer a link, but there’s a song about Metamorpho well worth checking out on YouTube.
“He’ll turn into copper, cobalt or tin…”
I never read these at the time, but did purchase House of Mystery #221, cover dated January, 1974, with a great Wrightson cover and a Wrightson-Kaluta story, “He Who Laughs Last,” that anticipates their team up in The Shadow #3 a month or two later.
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/House_of_Mystery_Vol_1_221?file=House_of_Mystery_v.1_221.jpg
As for a werewolf story, I also purchased Batman #255 that year with a Len Wein story on the topic, featuring Neal Adams’ last interior story art for this title for a very long time.
Just FYI, Chria A, that Kaluta-Wrightson “Shadow” story is coming up on the blog this coming Wednesday, while “Batman” #255 will be covered in late December.
Good to hear! Will enjoy your reviews of those, as I am well acquainted with them.
I was exposed to Ploog before Eisner, so when I did first see Eisner’s work, what struck me was how much Eisner reminded me of Ploog. As for the splash, yes, it evokes Sand Saref, P’gell, and possibly a few others whose names escape me at the moment.
Wisp O’Smoke, “Powder” Pouf, yes he had a few of them.
Eisner, in turn, was evoking film noir femme fatales with these characters, such as Lauren Bacall, Veronica Lake, etc.
I’ve probably commented on Frank Chiaramonte before. At the risk of repeating myself, he is unlikely to ever be anywhere near the top of my list of favorite inkers / embellishers. I feel that he was especially ill-suited to kink Curt Swan, and it boggles my mind that Julius Schwartz paired them up so frequently on the Superman books during the Bronze Age.
Having said that, Chiaramonte does a fine job inking Mike Ploog on these issues. The artwork for Werewolf by Night #13-14 is stunning and atmospheric.
As with everyone else, I doubt if when I was younger I would have recognized Ploog’s Eisner-esque splash page in issue #13, but now the homage immediately leaps right out at me. It’s a beautiful opening scene.
One last thing. I *really* miss the days when comic book scripts were so dense, when it actually took half an hour or more to read a single issue. I know some pencilers understandably disliked having their work buried under captions. But with comics now costing four or five bucks a pop, it’s ridiculous that so many of them only take 10 or 15 minutes to get through. I was just reminded of this looking at all of the text-heavy pages scripted by Marv Wolfman in these issues.